Rick Feneley, Anna Patty

The name George Alex is rarely printed without the prefix "underworld figure". This anti-honorific was attached to Alex's name long before it was officially blemished with his first criminal conviction.

That only happened in March this year when he pleaded guilty to sending an email containing a death threat to his ex-girlfriend: "Neck yourself before I get to you. I want you to die dog." A medical condition explained this "abysmal" lapse in his behaviour, Alex's lawyer explained.

His medical hurdles persisted, we learned this week, when Alex had another day in a courthouse. It was his long-awaited appearance in Sydney before the royal commission into union corruption. Here he denied paying kickbacks or supplying prostitutes to officials of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union so they would give his labour-hire and scaffolding companies a red-carpet entrance to building sites.

"As a Christian," Alex told the commission, " … I believe in redemption, and I'm not there to judge anybody."

That's why he hired former prisoners and allowed the convicted terrorism plotter Khaled Sharrouf and boxer Mohamed Elomar to do their training two or three days a week at his home in 2013.

Alex wasn't to know the pair would soon travel to the Middle East, join Islamic State and pose triumphantly for photos holding severed heads, as would Sharrouf's seven-year-old son Abdullah. "That's my boy," his dad gloated on social media.

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Alex couldn't have predicted the headlines that would coincide with his own this week: Elomar and Sharrouf killed in a drone strike on the IS stronghold of Mosul in Iraq.

But didn't Alex want these heavies around as his "muscle", asked senior counsel assisting the commission, Sarah McNaughton.

"No, absolutely not," said Alex. "There's no requirement for that. I've been doing kung-fu since I was four. I've got titanium legs. I'm pretty good. I take care of myself."

Alex really does have titanium in his legs, the legacy of a car accident. A resulting infection may yet require the amputation of his lower left leg, he told the commission.

"I'm just here on my own," Alex said, "one person with the truth, supported by facts, and I'm hoping to assist the commission to the best of my ability."

It echoed his theatrical flourish outside the commission last October when he had sat in the public gallery eyeballing the bloke in the witness box. "Big" Jim Byrnes had done business with Alex but they fell out over who was in debt to whom. Byrnes denied owing millions to the estate of Alex's murdered business partner, Joe Antoun, but he said: "The ultimate falling out was when they put three bullets in my house."

The son of Greek immigrants, Alex was casting himself as the virtuous marathoner. The royal commission, he said, was just an Abbott government "witch hunt" against Labor, so he looked forward to his opportunity to speak.

When it finally came on Wednesday, Alex told of his years as a battler. His father, whose demolition company had a contract with Lend Lease, died when he was young. George would step up, but then he needed cash to support his mother and three sisters, so be became a labourer.

"And from that I was able to build relationships with good, top-tier clients, and they requested two labourers and three, and that's how I was able to get into the labour-hire business."

Since then, Alex has had a succession of such businesses. They come, they go and they come again. The commission suspects he "phoenixes" them; that is, when one firm collapses in debt, he allegedly shifts its assets to a new firm, avoiding obligations to creditors, workers and the tax office. Two of his companies, Active Site Payroll Services and Elite Holdings Group, collapsed last year, only to be replaced by Active Labor Pty Ltd and Elite Access Scaffolding.

The questions for the commission are: Why has the union, the CFMEU, kept dealing with Alex, even after the tax office succeeded in having him declared bankrupt with more than $1 million of unpaid debts in 2011? Why did the union agree to enterprise bargaining agreements favourable to Alex's companies? And what was in it for Brian "Sparkles" Parker, the union's NSW secretary, who has stood aside pending the outcome of the inquiry, and for organiser Darren Greenfield?

The commission has heard claims that the CFMEU received a weekly kickback of $2500 from companies linked to Alex, and that such a payment may have been left for Greenfield at a regular pick-up point - inside a drawer under Alex's toilet sink.

Parker and Greenfield had been regular guests at Alex's home, but both deny taking kickbacks or inducements and Greenfield told the commission he retrieved documents, not money, from that drawer.

Greenfield also denies calling union whistle-blower Brian Fitzpatrick and saying words to the effect: "You have gone too far this time, you fat c---. You're dead. I'm coming over there tomorrow and I'm going to kill you."

Judge Dyson Heydon, who is heading the royal commission, has said he "prefers" Fitzpatrick's version of events.

Alex might prefer he was made of Teflon rather than titanium, if only for the company he has kept. There's Mick Gatto, yet another underworld figure who Alex calls "uncle" and whose criminal he reckons has been "blown up by the media". Alex denied paying Gatto $300,000, even though his name was on the bill for "industrial relations services".

There's Alex's former business partner Zeljko "Steven" Mitrovic, a high-ranking Hells Angel who was murdered in a hail of bullets at his business at Wetherell Park after about seven men were sent to collect a debt on January 15, 2013. Then, in July 2013, debt collector Vasko Boskovski was shot dead as he answered the door at his Earlwood home. Five months later, on December 16, Alex's business partner Joe Antoun met the same fate at his home in Strathfield. Antoun and Boskovski had also been partners – in the standover business. Fairfax Media does not suggest Alex was involved in any of these killings.

It was Antoun, says Alex, who suggested he take a shooting trip to the Blue Mountains with Sharrouf and Elomar in November 2013. "Mr Alex was suffering from depression," his lawyer told the ABC's Four Corners, "and Joe thought an over-nighter was in order to pick him up."

Within weeks the jihadists took their final flights from Australia.

The commission, focusing on Alex's organised crime links, has noted a photograph, published by Fairfax Media, of Alex at $3000-a-head event in November 2012 with former world champion boxer Mike Tyson, former Comancheros bikie Sam Hamden, a man who had done time for steroid and gun offences, Bilal Fatrouni, and Khaled Sharrouf.

"I like to meet people when they come out of jail," Alex told the commission this week, "and, unfortunately, they can't work in ivory towers. They gravitate to this construction sector, and we are on the lower social demographic aspect of it.

"This is the only thing they can do. So because I employ them, are you suggesting we're better than these people, like, because they have tattoos or they're not in a suit? This is wrong."

They had come to him "as free men", after all. He defended their honour as he has attempted to defend his own. One of his attempts to sue Fairfax Media has been thrown out of court. Another two, including a case against Herald editor-in-chief Darren Goodsir, are pending. So are actions against Daily Telegraph journalists and the ABC.

When Alex returned to the commission on Friday morning, dark circles under his eyes, his solicitor, John Hajje, said: "Mr Alex finished up quite unwell on the last occasion ... He instructs me that he's had to, on the advice of his doctor, double his dosage of oxycodone this morning which has left him feeling somewhat groggy."

It might explain his "demeanour in the box". Alex went on to describe as "silly" Brian Fitzpatrick's claim that he turned up to a union Christmas party with a wheelbarrow full of hampers and alcohol. Yes, he brought those gifts - "it was red label and not black" - but not in a wheel barrow. "Brian Fitzpatrick wanted a very expensive bourbon and he made it very clear to me."

Alex disowned text messages sent from his phone, including: "1k to wisam 2500 to Darren give Michael Couts 1000 keep 500". Other people often used his phone, he said. It might have been Antoun, his late business partner.

He accused Jim Byrnes of killing Antoun. And he accused counsel assisting of "distorting the truth" and taking his text messages out of context. "I could say, for example, 'Run for your life, mate.' That would mean I'm making a threat or that might mean I'm caring for the bloke because there is a tsunami coming."

A tsunami may well be coming for Alex. He remains a free-ish man, despite his conviction for the death threat. Rather than jail, he was sentenced to a 16-month intensive corrections order, which he is serving in the community under strict supervision.

His former girlfriend, Anna Lee, has opted to live overseas. So has Jim Byrnes, who now resides in the United States.